Pre-NES Nintendo Swag

[L0neStar | 34]

I've had these for a while and upon closer inspection I realized there was a label for a certain video game company that made a number of products prior to the time most of us got to know Nintendo.  The product in question is a deck of cards. These cards date to the early 70's before Nintendo entered the video game world.  The numbered cards are standard on the front face.  The face cards feature various Japanese personages and the ace of spades alone is unique in featuring a calligraphic letter N in the center of the ace. This particular deck sold for 500 yen and also features a hard shell holographic case. I was caught off guard when I noticed the Nintendo sticker on the case. So I just wanted to share this with all of the Nintendo fanboys on VGS, because I've never seen another deck like it. I also thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for people to share anything they might have dating to Nintendo's earlier years.

 

[MiamiSlice | 3,184]

A while back I started looking into Nintendo playing card sets and ended up buying a bunch off Yahoo Auctions and Mercari via Buyee. You can still find lots of Nintendo playing card sets for sale and they tend to be cheap. Most of the ones you will find are from the video game era and feature Nintendo franchises like Mario, Kirby, Pikmin, etc. But one item I did manage to find was this Magic Card game from 1975. 

Here's a blog post that talks about it: http://blog.beforemario.com/2013/12/nintendo-miracle-trump-1972.html

[NostalgicMachine | 334]

YO! Those are legit, OP! That's some serious Nintendo pre-history history right there!

[RH | 5,246]

I'm a big fan of pre-Mario Nintendo stuff. They were big in the card manufacturing industry, and not just in Japan. I know there's a US set of cards that have branded, licensed Disney characters that came out in the 60s. A long time ago I meant to pick up a deck of those. I never did and I'm assuming they're now out of my price range but who knows.

To me, the "holy grail" item of old Nintendo items I'd like is a Hanafuda set by them that's over 100 years old. However, that's I assume if any of those still exist in great shape, they are at the Nintendo museum in Japan.